Little Eichmanns

Last updated
Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem (1961) Adolf Eichmann at Trial1961.jpg
Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem (1961)

"Little Eichmanns" is a term used to describe people whose actions, while on an individual scale may seem relatively harmless even to themselves, taken collectively create destructive and immoral systems in which they are actually complicit. The name comes from Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi bureaucrat who helped to orchestrate the Holocaust, but claimed that he did so without feeling anything about his actions, merely following the orders given to him.

Contents

The use of "Eichmann" as an archetype stems from Hannah Arendt's notion of the "banality of evil". [1] According to Arendt in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem , Eichmann relied on propaganda rather than thinking for himself, and carried out Nazi goals mostly to advance his career, appearing at his trial to have an ordinary and common personality while displaying neither guilt nor hatred. She suggested that this most strikingly discredits the idea that the Nazi war criminals were manifestly psychopathic and fundamentally different from ordinary people. [1] [2] [3]

The idea that Eichmann –or, indeed, the majority of Nazis or those working in such regimes –actually fit this concept has been criticized by those who contend that Eichmann and the majority of Nazis were in fact deeply ideological and extremely antisemitic, with Eichmann, in particular, having been fixated on and obsessed with the Jews from a young age. [4] German political scientist Clemens Heni  [ de ] goes so far as to say the phrase "belittles the Holocaust". [5]

Barbara Mann wrote that the term was perhaps best known for its use by anarcho-primitivist writer John Zerzan in his essay Whose Unabomber? written in 1995, although it was already common in the 1960s, [6] [7] as various prior examples are known. [8] [9] [10] It gained prominence in American political culture several years after the September 11 attacks, when a controversy ensued [11] [12] over the 2003 book On the Justice of Roosting Chickens , [13] republishing a similarly titled essay Ward Churchill wrote shortly after the attacks. [14] [15] In the essay, Churchill used the phrase to describe technocrats working at the World Trade Center: [16]

If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannah Arendt</span> German American historian and philosopher (1906–1975)

Hannah Arendt was a German-American historian and philosopher. She was one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Zerzan</span> American anarchist and primitivist philosopher

John Edward Zerzan is an American anarchist and primitivist author. His works criticize agricultural civilization as inherently oppressive, and advocates drawing upon the ways of life of hunter-gatherers as an inspiration for what a free society should look like. Subjects of his criticism include domestication and symbolic thought.

<i>Sophies Choice</i> (novel) 1979 novel by William Styron

Sophie's Choice is a 1979 novel by American author William Styron. The author's last novel, it concerns the relationships among three people sharing a boarding house in Brooklyn: Stingo, a young aspiring writer from the South, Jewish scientist Nathan Landau, and his lover Sophie, a Polish-Catholic survivor of the German Nazi concentration camps, whom Stingo befriends.

<i>The Destruction of the European Jews</i> 1961 historical book by Raul Hilberg

The Destruction of the European Jews is a 1961 book by historian Raul Hilberg. Hilberg revised his work in 1985, and it appeared in a new three-volume edition. It is largely held to be the first comprehensive historical study of the Holocaust. According to Holocaust historian, Michael R. Marrus, until the book appeared, little information about the genocide of the Jews by Nazi Germany had "reached the wider public" in both the West and the East, and even in pertinent scholarly studies it was "scarcely mentioned or only mentioned in passing as one more atrocity in a particularly cruel war".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raul Hilberg</span> Austrian-born American political scientist and historian

Raul Hilberg was a Jewish Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the preeminent scholar on the Holocaust. Christopher R. Browning has called him the founding father of Holocaust studies and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as seminal for research into the Nazi Final Solution.

<i>The Origins of Totalitarianism</i> Book by Hannah Arendt examining Nazism and Stalinism

The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was Hannah Arendt's first major work, where she describes and analyzes Nazism and Stalinism as the major totalitarian political movements of the first half of the 20th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gershom Scholem</span> German-Israeli philosopher (1897–1982)

Gershom Scholem was a German-born Israeli philosopher and historian. Widely regarded as the founder of modern academic study of the Kabbalah, Scholem was appointed the first professor of Jewish mysticism at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

David Ian Cesarani was a British historian who specialised in Jewish history, especially the Holocaust. He also wrote several biographies, including Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind (1998).

<i>On the Justice of Roosting Chickens</i> 2003 book by Ward Churchill

On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality is a 2003 book written by Ward Churchill and published by AK Press. The "Roosting Chickens" of the title comes from a 1963 Malcolm X speech about the John F. Kennedy assassination, which the rights activist called "merely a case of 'chickens coming home to roost.'"

Rodomontade is a mass noun meaning boastful talk or behavior. The term is a reference to Rodomonte, a character in the Italian Renaissance epic poem Orlando innamorato and its sequel Orlando furioso.

<i>Eichmann in Jerusalem</i> 1963 book by Hannah Arendt

Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil is a 1963 book by the philosopher and political thinker Hannah Arendt. Arendt, a Jew who fled Germany during Adolf Hitler's rise to power, reported on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, for The New Yorker. A revised and enlarged edition was published in 1964.

<i>The Myth of Hitlers Pope</i> 2005 book by David G. Dalin

The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews from the Nazis is a 2005 book by American historian and Rabbi David G. Dalin. It was published by Regnery Publishing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ward Churchill</span> American author and political activist (born 1947)

Ward LeRoy Churchill is an American activist and author. He was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado Boulder from 1990 until 2007. Much of Churchill's work focuses on the historical treatment of political dissenters and Native Americans by the United States government, and he expresses controversial views in a direct, often confrontational style. While Churchill has claimed Native American ancestry, genealogical research has failed to unearth such ancestry and he is not a member of a tribe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Günther Anders</span> German-Austrian philosopher (1902–1992)

Günther Anders was a German-born philosopher, journalist and critical theorist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adolf Eichmann</span> German Nazi official and war criminal (1906–1962)

Otto Adolf Eichmann was a German-Austrian official of the Nazi Party, an officer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. He participated in the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the implementation of the genocidal Final Solution to the Jewish Question was planned. Following this, he was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics involved in the mass deportation of millions of Jews to Nazi ghettos and Nazi extermination camps across German-occupied Europe. He was captured and detained by the Allies in 1945, but escaped and eventually settled in Argentina. In May 1960, he was tracked down and apprehended by Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, and put on trial before the Supreme Court of Israel. The highly publicised Eichmann trial resulted in his conviction in Jerusalem, following which he was executed by hanging in 1962.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eichmann trial</span> 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann

The Eichmann trial was the 1961 trial in Israel of major Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann who was kidnapped in Argentina by Israeli agents and brought to Israel to stand trial. Eichmann was a senior Nazi party member and served at the rank of Obersturmbenführer (Lieutenant-Colonel) in the SS, and was one of the people primarily responsible for the implementation of the Final Solution. He was responsible for the Nazis' train shipments from across Europe to the concentration camps, even managing the shipment to Hungary directly, where 564,000 Jews died. After World War II he fled to Argentina, living under the pseudonym "Ricardo Clement" until his capture in 1960 by Mossad.

Moral blindness, also known as ethical blindness, is defined as a person's temporary inability to see the ethical aspect of a decision they are making. It is often caused by external factors due to which an individual is unable to see the immoral aspect of their behavior in that particular situation.

<i>Operation Finale</i> 2018 film directed by Chris Weitz

Operation Finale is a 2018 American historical dramatic thriller film directed by Chris Weitz from a screenplay by Matthew Orton about a 1960 clandestine operation by Israeli commandos to capture former SS officer Adolf Eichmann, and transport him to Jerusalem for trial on charges of crimes against humanity. The film stars Oscar Isaac as the Mossad officer Peter Malkin, and Ben Kingsley as Eichmann, with Lior Raz, Mélanie Laurent, Nick Kroll, and Haley Lu Richardson. Several source materials, including Eichmann in My Hands, by Peter Malkin and Harry Stein, provided the basis for the story.

<i>Industrial Society and Its Future</i> 1995 essay by Ted Kaczynski

Industrial Society and Its Future, also known as the Unabomber Manifesto, is a 1995 anti-technology essay by Ted Kaczynski, the "Unabomber". The manifesto contends that the Industrial Revolution began a harmful process of natural destruction brought about by technology, while forcing humans to adapt to machinery, creating a sociopolitical order that suppresses human freedom and potential.

References

  1. 1 2 Busk, Larry (July 31, 2015). "Sleepwalker: Arendt, Thoughtlessness, and the Question of Little Eichmanns" (PDF). Social Philosophy Today. 31. doi:10.5840/socphiltoday201573023 . Retrieved June 23, 2018.
  2. ↑ Arendt, Hannah (1977). Eichmann in Jerusalem. New York: Penguin Books.
  3. ↑ Özkırımlı, Umut (October 31, 2017). "On the Banality of Evil and 'Little Eichmanns'". Ahval.
  4. ↑ for example, see Jason, Gary J (17 August 2015). "Are We All Little Eichmanns?; The Killing Compartments: The Mentality of Mass Murder, Author: Abram de Swann New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015, 332 pp". Philosophia. 44 (1). doi:10.1007/s11406-016-9694-y. S2CID   147548088.
  5. ↑ Heni, Clemens (Fall 2008). "Secondary Anti-Semitism:From Hard-core to Soft-core Denial of the Shoah". Jewish Political Studies Review. 20 (3/4): 82.
  6. ↑ Mann, Barbara Alice (February 26, 2017). "And Then They Build Monuments to You". In Churchill, Ward (ed.). Wielding Words Like Weapons: Selected Essays in Indigenism, 1995–2005. PM Press.
  7. ↑ Zerzan, John (2002) [1995]. "Whose Unabomber?". Running on Emptiness: The Pathology of Civilisation. Los Angeles: Feral House. ISBN   978-0-922915-75-0. Archived from the original on 2009-03-18.
  8. ↑ Dornberg, John (1961). Schizophrenic Germany. MacMillan. p. 52.
  9. ↑ Sexton, Anne (1967). "Live". Live or Die. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN   978-0395081808.. Reprinted and analyzed in: Horváth, Rita (2005). "'My Business Is Words': The Poetry of Anne Sexton". "Never Asking Why Build – Only Asking Which Tools": Confessional Poetry and the Construction of the Self. Philosophiae Doctores. Vol. 36. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. pp. 117–118. ISBN   9789630582322. OCLC   61133213 . Retrieved August 5, 2015.
  10. ↑ Mumford, Lewis (1970). The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of the Machine, Vol. II . New York City: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p.  279. ISBN   978-0-15-163974-8.
  11. ↑ Reid, T.R. (February 5, 2005). "Professor Under Fire For 9/11 Comments: Free Speech Furor Roils Over Remarks". Washington Post.
  12. ↑ Churchill, Ward (February 1, 2005). "Ward Churchill Statement". Daily Camera . Archived from the original on 1 June 2013. Retrieved 5 August 2015.
  13. ↑ Churchill, Ward (November 1, 2003). On the Justice of Roosting Chickens: Reflections on the Consequences of U.S. Imperial Arrogance and Criminality . AK Press. ISBN   978-1902593791.
  14. ↑ Ivie, Robert L. (Fall 2006). "Academic freedom and antiwar dissent in a democratic idiom". College Literature. 33 (4). Johns Hopkins University Press: 76–92. doi:10.1353/lit.2006.0055. S2CID   145409384. Churchill was made notorious for views he expressed on 9/11 about the culpability of Americans, including the victims of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, whom he labeled 'little Eichmanns' rather than innocent civilians. When this provocative label was brought into focus three years later, in the superheated context of a coordinated and persistent national assault on academic freedom by the politically ascendant right, it prompted a rebuke of Churchill in a formal resolution passed by the Colorado House of Representatives and a call by the state's governor for Churchill to resign his position as professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado. The attack on Churchill motivated in turn a university investigation that concluded Churchill was operating within his right of free speech but should be investigated further for related charges of plagiarism and misrepresentation of his Native-American ethnicity.
  15. ↑ Fritch, John; Palczewski, Catherine Helen; Farrell, Jennifer; Short, Eric (Spring 2006). "Disingenuous controversy: responses to ward Churchill's 9/11 essay". Argumentation and Advocacy. 42 (4): 190–205. doi:10.1080/00028533.2006.11821654. S2CID   141233099.
  16. ↑ Churchill, Ward (September 2001). "'Some People Push Back': On the Justice of Roosting Chickens". Pockets of Resistance. 20. Archived from the original on 2018-04-16. Retrieved August 5, 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.